Janice M. Scott, the family genealogist, drove
around the South for a week thissummer tracing her ancestral roots.

The 46-year-old Army budget analyst picked
up her sister Darlene in Columbia, South Carolina, and they headed for
Grenada, Mississippi, and then Memphis, Tennessee. They combed library
archives, collected photographs and interviewed people who knew the Scott
family's history.

"She was able to go back as far as the slavery
days, four or five generations," said her husband, Abraham Scott, from
the family's Springfield home. "She was curious and wanted to know her
grandmother and great-grandmother and who their children were. And once
she started doing it, she just becameoverwhelmed with joy and excitement."

When 70-some members of the family held a reunion
in Atlanta last month, Scott, herself a mother of two, made a genealogy
chart and put it 1up in the hotel. She gave everyone copies.

"She wanted our children and their children
to know where their roots are," saidAbraham Scott, a budget analyst for the Department
of Veterans Affairs.

Janice Scott, who had worked at the Pentagon
since the late 1980s, was relocated last month to Room 471, First Floor,
E Ring -- the area destroyed by hijacked Flight 77.

The Scotts, who have two daughters -- Crystal
Marie, 23, and Angel Marie, 15 -- were to celebrate their 25th anniversary
in December.

WASHINGTON, September 16, 2001 -- Shortly after
terrorists slammed commercial airplanes into the two World Trade Center
towers in New York City, Abraham Scott's office phone rang. It was his
wife, Janice Marie Scott, 46, calling.

Had he heard about the incident at the World
Trade Center? she asked.

"No," he answered.

After they chatted for a couple of minutes,
Janice Scott, an Army budget analyst at the Pentagon, said she couldn't
talk any longer because she wanted to watch or listen to the news.

The next tragic news Abraham Scott heard was
that a hijacked airliner had crashed into the Pentagon. Janice Marie Scott
is among the Army personnel listed as unaccounted for.

"I couldn't believe it -- still can't believe
it," Scott said sadly, during a DoD Family(Casualty) Assistance Center-sponsored visit
to the crash site on September 15. "Especially impacting on my wife, because
I'd just spoken to her about 15 to 30 minutes prior to the plane hitting
the Pentagon."

"I don't know exactly where she was upon the
impact, but at least I had an opportunity to talk to her a few minutes
before the impact occurred," Scott said.

When he heard a plane had crashed into the
Pentagon, he immediately called his wife to see if she was all right. "There
was no answer," he said. "My other reaction was to try to get to the Pentagon
to find out what was going on."

He rushed from his downtown office in the National
Cemetery Administration of theDepartment of Veterans Affairs here to the
Metro subway and boarded a train for thePentagon. The train halted at the Rosslyn
(Virginia) station, two stops early.

"We had to come out of the Metro tunnel and
catch a bus," Scott said. The bus's first stop was supposed to be just
past the Pentagon, but it was diverted instead to Crystal City, a high-rise
business area in Arlington, Virginia, about a mile from the building.

He walked to the Pentagon parking lot where
his wife usually parked their car, but he was unable to reach the site.

"I called my home number and got the answering
machine. Then I knew something was definitely wrong," Scott said.

When he learned the subway trains were running
again, he rushed to a station, got on the first one that came along and
rode it to the end of the line in Springfield, Virginia. Then he took a
taxi home.

He said he thought about driving his other
car back to the Pentagon, but his sister called from Pennsylvania and persuaded
him to stay home, listen to the news and wait for a call.

"I just waited. We'd called all the hospitals
and there wasn't a Janice Scott checked in," Scott said. "So all I could
do was wait and pray and hope for the best. Didn't get any news until late
that night."

Fighting back tears, he continued. "I'd be
untruthful if I told you that I'm doing well," he said, figuring it's the
grace of God he's been able to cope. "I'm a born-again Christian, and I'm
leaning on the Lord's shoulders to help me get through it."

The couple has two daughters, Crystal Marie,
23, and Angel Marie, 15.

"It's devastating," he said sadly. "Being a
Christian man, I have no hate or malice against those who perpetrated this
or (were) involved in the execution of the action. I have pity for them.
Pity them to allow someone or some group to persuade them to do such a
despicable cowardly act.

Abraham Scott and his
daughters, Crystal and Angel, hold a picture board of wife and mother Janice
Marie Scott, who worked at the Pentagon in the area destroyed in the crash
of a hijacked airliner Sept. 11, 2001. Family members who desired were
escorted by DoD Family (Casualty) Assistance Center personnel to visit
the crash site Sept. 15. Janice Scott is among the Army civilian personnel
listed as unaccounted for.